In washing, drying and styling one's hair several end results are desired. Firstly, and most obviously, one desires that the hair be thoroughly cleaned. Most desirable is a hair care process which maintains the look and feel of clean hair between hair washings. Also in the cleaning and styling process, one desires hair conditioning providing ease of combing, relief from static electricity, manageability, and soft hair feel.
Finally, one desires a hair care process or product that provides hair styling benefits, especially hair style achievement and hold. The desire to have hair retain a particular shape is widely held. Such style retention is generally accomplished by either of two routes: permanent chemical alteration or temporary alteration of hair style/shape. A temporary alteration is one which can be removed by water or by shampooing. Temporary style alteration has generally been accomplished by means of the application of a third separate composition or compositions to dampened hair after shampooing and/or conditioning. The materials used to provide setting benefits have generally been resins or gums and have been applied in the form of mousses, gels, lotions, or sprays. The compositions are most often applied to hair dampened with water; then combed or spread through the hair by other means; followed by letting the hair dry or blow drying the hair.
The set given will vary depending on the materials used. Temporary set hair styling products typically utilize adhesive polymers which are ethanol or water-soluble rigid polymers having glass transition temperatures well above the temperatures experienced in styling hair. Examples of such high glass transition temperature adhesion polymers are found in Viout and Papantoniou U.S. Pat. 3,743,715, issued July 3, 1973; Chakrabarti U.S. Pat. No. 4,165,367, issued Aug. 21, 1979; and Chakrabarti U.S. Pat. No. 4,223,009, issued Sept. 16, 1980; the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference herein. These adhesive polymers are typically applied to the hair in an ethanol or water solvent, and then set to form rigid welds between hair fibers when the solvent evaporates as the hair dries. These hair fiber welds form the basis for the style hold ability of conventional hair styling products. When these welds are broken, they remain broken unless the appropriate polymer solvent is added to redissolve the adhesive and reform the welds when the hair dries.
In addition, many polymers said to be useful in hair styling products are multi-component polymers which combine three, four, and even more monomers into the polymer chains. Frequently, one of the monomer components is vinyl pyrrolidone. Examples of such complex polymer systems are found in Grosser et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,222,329, issued Dec. 7, 1965; Kubot U.S. Pat. No. 3,577,517, issued May 4, 1971; Farber U.S. Pat. No. 4,012,501, issued Mar. 15, 1977; and Papantoniou and Mondet U.S. Pat. No. 4,272,511, issued June 9, 1981; the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference herein.
Other polymers said to be useful for hair styling compositions have been disclosed, such as block copolymers. These block polymers have two or more glass transition temperatures. Examples of such block polymer systems are found in Calvert et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,907,984, issued Sept. 23, 1975; Papantoniou et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,030,512, issued June 21, 1977; and Jacquet et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,283,384, issued Aug. 11, 1981; the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference herein.
This traditional hair styling approach presents significant drawbacks to the user. Since the style hold is provided by resin materials which set-up on the hair, the hair tends to feel sticky or stiff after application, and it is difficult to restyle the hair without further application of the styling composition. Furthermore, since the resin materials tend to be water or ethanol-soluble, under high humidity conditions the resins become very sticky, resulting in loss of hair style and hold benefits.
Notwithstanding the great effort already put forth to identify adhesive polymers for use in temporary set hair styling products, there remains a continuing need to identify new agents which are useful to provide improved temporary set and other desirable properties to hair.
It has now been discovered that optimum hair styling and hold benefits can be achieved by utilizing hair styling compositions which comprise certain hair styling polymers, certain solvents for said hair styling polymers, and an aqueous base, wherein the polymer/solvent mixture is dispersed in the aqueous base as a separate phase.
It has now been discovered that the hair styling compositions of the present invention provide ease of hair styling achievement.
It has also been discovered that the hair styling compositions of the present invention provide good style retention benefits without leaving hair with a stiff or sticky/tacky feel.
It has also been discovered that the aforementioned products provide some degree of restyling benefit to the hair.
Hence, it is an object of the present invention to formulate hair styling compositions which provide improved hair styling benefits.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an improved method for styling hair.
These and other objects will become readily apparent from the detailed description which follows.